You Have Killed Him, Eat Him Then!

Story Time With Felgonah

Recently, I've been feeling happier. Maybe it is something in the air. I constantly feel the need to reach out to old friends to find out how they are. Just yesterday I talked to Omollo. We were primary schoolmates. Let me tell you that boy, well a man now, could run with a ball. He was the best soccer player we had had at Sawagongo Primary School. I dare say in the whole of Gem. He is doing as well as expected. His wife has been abroad for the last ten years, moving from country to country carrying their grandchildren. Omollo needs someone to look after him. I encouraged him to take the woman who cleans and cooks for him. He talked about her at length. I am sure I did not give him any ideas. 

I am meeting my friends this evening for a drink. At my age, I need an afternoon nap to manage an evening out. As I waddle to my bedroom, a cup of tea in hand, I stop to look at our wedding portrait on the wall. We have been married for twenty-five years. I get the feeling that Dorcas does not love me anymore. She barely looks at me. As long as I come home every day or at least call to say I will not be home, she has no problem. Her fridge is full. I educated our children. The house is ours and she has a car outside that is always fuelled. She is comfortable. She barely has anything to say to me unless it is to report an engagement, birth, death, or illness. That is all we discuss. But in this picture, we were so happy. And young. Also, trim. Ahh, happy times.

Inside our room, we have separate beds. Dorcas has a bad back and needs a different type of mattress and space. I have decided to believe that story. I sit on my bed. The room is strangely chilly despite the afternoon sun. I remove my shoes.

A loud shriek startles me. It is Dorcas. I look at her perplexed. Before I can figure out what has happened, Isadora badges into our bedroom and immediately throws her headscarf on the floor. Now, Isadora Nyar Ugenya is a very dramatic woman. She came to us when Babu, our firstborn, was born. That was 26 years ago. So don't start doing the math now. We had our son and then got married. Everything about Isadora is a whole production. She could never say the gas is finished. Instead, she would say, “It seems we will go back to cooking on three stones.” 

So seeing her acting up now was not shocking. But Dorcas screaming? That I had not witnessed in many years, in or outside the bedroom.

Our security guards come in and start lifting a man off the floor. Wait. That is me. They are lifting me from the floor. 

Am I dead? I am dead. Dead. Me?

I looked around. Where is the bright light? Jesus? Or am I in hell? The devil? The only screams are from Dorcas and Isadora. I thought they said there would be more screams in hell.

The security guards have managed to put me on my bed. They haven't even removed my shoes. I don't like shoes on my bed; I have been walking outside, surely. Wait, I am dead.

I am dead.

I am not sad; I am not happy; I am numb. Maybe I should use this opportunity to go where I have always wanted to go. But I cannot be too far from my body. What luck is this? I feel free and trapped at the same time.

The jostling at the door brings me back to the happenings in the room. More security guards and one has a slip. It is from the police. I cannot believe my eyesight is this good. Death might just be a cure for short-sightedness. I feel like laughing at my discovery, but I worry they might hear me. The slip says I have died at home and the morgue should accept me. They ask Dorcas where they should take me, and she says Lee Funeral Home. Of course, where else would I go? 

“Wait!” Dorcas yells as the guards attempt to pick up my body, “You must wait for his son.” She says as she sits next to me on the bed and continues to cry. I cannot believe she has these many tears for me. I thought she would be happy that I would be out of her hair.

“Give me my phone, please.” 

Isadora quickly runs out of the room and is back in a flash.

“Hello, Babu? Where are you my son? Ahh, ok. Is your wife with you? Give her the phone.”

She sniffs, and Isadora quietly hands her a dishcloth hanging from her apron.

“Hello? My daughter? My husband is gone. He is dead!”

Isadora starts screaming again. Dorcas tries to speak into the phone. She looks so tired and old.

“We are at home. We can't move until Babu comes. Tell him, then come. Please. Please come.”

The guards are standing by the door. They look so melancholy. I wish someone would tell them to use deodorant. Wait, my sense of smell is still there? 

Babu walks in. That was fast. My heart breaks. Now I am sad. Sad for my son.

“Baba!”

He calls out to me, then kneels beside me and cries. How I wish I could console him. I feel so sorry for him. Isadora, the drama queen, is now seated on the floor, wailing. Dorcas has stopped crying now. She hugs her son and her daughter-in-law and then leaves the room. I do not think her children have ever seen her cry..

Babu’s wife, Soni, Nyar Jomoko, as we call her, is not the woman I would have imagined my son marrying. I saw him with a woman who was much like his mother. He was always so close to his mother. He surprised us all when he brought this one. For starters, she was very unfeeling. Look at her, my body lying there, her husband on his knees, and she looks like she is trying to hold in a fart. I do not harbour any ill feelings towards her. She is just a bit weird. She insisted on giving their children names from her people. She argued that they would have Babu’s name as their last name. The last name she does not even use. Unless it benefits her, of course.

Anyway, that is Babu’s bed. He will lay in it and hopefully get me a grandson. He is, after all, my only son. This thought brings me some sadness. 

Dorcas and I have only three children. My firstborn daughter, Keturah, is a girl after my heart. A headstrong child who charted her path. She got married early, much to my disappointment, even worse to a stooge, but she quickly got herself out of that situation. No one can keep that one down. She makes me smile. I wonder if she has been told. That I am dead. She has five children, all bearing our names. “Why give perpetuity to hyenas?” She would ask when questioned about that decision. I often find myself wishing Keturah had been born a son. Nevertheless, she is five sons as the woman she is.

Naomi is our last child and her mother’s copy in everything. She causes the least problems but is full of resentment. She wants to participate in life but fears everything, including her shadow. She wants attention but wants you to find her hidden in everything, including her religion and her clothes, to give it to her. She is my daughter. I love her. She is also tedious and trying.

“Baba! Baba! Baba yawaaaaa! Aiiiiiiiiiiii, they have finished me now! Who will protect me? Where will I run to?”

Oh dear, it is Keturah—my darling child. My heart shatters into many pieces. I am gutted.

“Get up, get up Baba, please get up!”

She shakes my body. I wish I could get up for my girl.

“Baba, please, please, what have you done? Please, Baba.”

Isadora tried to console her.

“He is in a better place”

“A better place you took him there?”

Now that is my girl. I want to laugh because we would have laughed, Keturah and I. She always had something to say.

“Let me cry for my father. Those who threw theirs away can continue posing!”

This was a low jab, directed at Nya Jomoko who had not shed a tear. I honestly did not expect her to.

Keturah did not like her brother’s wife, and she did not hide it.

Isadora shoos the guards out of my room because now they look out of place.

“Wait downstairs. We shall call you when we are ready”

Here comes Naomi with her mother. She sniffles. No loud carrying on. Though I know she wishes she could throw herself all over the place like her sister. She instead says a silent prayer at the foot of my bed. Rarely looking at my body.

‘Let us stand and pray” Dorcas says to her children. Babu and Naomi stand. Keturah is now lying on the floor and continues crying.

“Our dear heavenly father.'' Dorcas starts, ignoring Ketura’s crying that is getting louder, “We say thank you for the life of Baba, for the years you gave him to us. Now that you have taken him, help, guide, and comfort us. In Jesus' name, Amen”

“Areto ka wuotho e yo, ma dhi malo ndalo duto…”

It is my sister! My sister has come. I know that voice even before I see her. I can hear her firm steps as she climbs up the stairs. And she never walks alone. I can hear the other women. I jokingly call them the ‘farewell party’. I am telling you; you want these women at your funeral. They fight for you when your voice is no longer loud enough for the living to hear.

Awiti is a tall, slender woman. She has the face of an angel but can be the biggest devil at the slightest provocation. She has been my protector. My eldest sister has sacrificed a lot for me. As a girl, her schooling was delayed because she had to look after me as a baby. She never once complained. She continued to look out for me, even as an adult.

“Ok! You have killed him. Eat him then!”

“Mayooooo!! Nyathiwa! Mamanaa Mama, mama!!! Yawaaaaaa, owadwa, my brother! What curse is this? I was to go first. You have left me, everyone has left me. Baba na, Mama na, you have left me alone.”

I reached out to touch Awiti. I could not bear her pain. I think she felt my hand. She reached to touch my hand on her shoulder like she had done so many times.

“Ruoth ting’a malo mond a chung’

Ka yie weche ni duto

Med ting’a malo…”

She felt my hand. It gave her the strength to sing.

Her ladies join in.

“Adwaro bedo mo tegno…”

Awiti picks up Keturah from the floor. These two are the same person. I was indeed blessed. To have Awiti as my sister and to have her again as my daughter. 

The two women embrace.

Then Awiti holds Keturah by the shoulders.

“Don’t fear anything. God is with you. Your father will never leave you. Be strong.”

She then goes around the room and shakes everyone's hands.

“Mos uru ahinya, poleni sana. I am sorry.”

“Ruoth ting’a malo mond a chung’......”

The women continue in song. They sound like angels. 

I remember everything. The sound of my mother’s voice. The way her hands felt like satin. She was always making tasty chapatis. I remember my father, the smell of the smoke from his kwesi as it hung from his mouth while he read the weekend paper. I am back home. I see them. I look up at my grandmother's house. She is sitting outside her square hut crocheting a pink tablecloth. Kwaru, her husband, is trying to tie his cow, Saddam, to a tree. The village is bustling again. So refreshing to see so many of my relatives. Uncle Wanyama is running. Like he always did, he yells at my father, “We are having guests soon! I will send my wives to help with the preparation!”

It had been a while since we had guests in the village.

Chunya ok gomb siko e piny, Kuma chich gi luoro nitie..

I am back in my bedroom. They carry my body out. I go down my stairs, I built this house. Out through my front door, I go for the last time. My family follows us. Oh look, they called a hearse. 

Keturah and Awiti jump into the hearse with my body. My son gets into his car with his mother. To follow us. 

I look back at Naomi at the front door. Crying.

Awiti’s groupies still singing, get into another car.

Today is the day I died.

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